Fri Dec 07, 2012 at 09:28:13 AM EST

Before we launch into yesterday's exercise in cowardice, I wanted to pass along this comment from MSU economist Charles Ballard.

“If what we want to do is do a little bit better at attracting certain kinds of low-wage jobs, I think this may help,” Ballard said. “But it’s an awful lot of political blood to be spilled for something that will not galvanize Michigan’s economy.”

Or, how do we spell the Great Lakes State's proper name? M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. Or Alabama. And, the next few years will be difficult, partisan sledding because of it. Any trust that had been built up is now gone, and it's not gone because both sides were equally guilty of doing something wrong. It's gone because one side -- the majority side -- ramrodded controversial legislation through in lame duck without public input.

On to a couple profiles from Dome. We remember the early days of this administration, when people were feeling pretty good that we had a Nerd as our governor who wasn't a social conservative mouth-breathing tea bagger. He said he wasn't interested in partisan games and was focused solely on problem solving (or, in this case, problem creating). We were told that the Senate Majority Leader was a moderate in the party, and that the House Speaker was a fellow traveler of theirs.

One of the profiles was about Sara Wurfel, benevolent overlord Rick Michigan's spokeswoman. Here is what she had to say about leaving political work in the first place.

But in 2004, she decided she needed a change, especially from what she calls “uber-partisanship” in a rare flash of frustration — quite a change from the maternal, million-watt smile Wurfel usually displays when standing next to the governor.

“It’s why I got out,” she recalls. “I was tired of it. It didn’t seem right anymore.”

“Some people might be surprised that I would come back,” he says. “I was very frustrated about what was going on [before] at the Capitol, with people not working together…But I was very excited about the potential for change. I was happy about the election — not just for the party, but in terms of leadership.”

At some point, words are meaningless and what become really, really important are actions. These guys can talk about cooperation and bipartisanship and working together all they want, but when the rubber meets the road they just don't have it in them to do it. What we saw yesterday was an insult to the notion of representative democracy, and an act of pure petty partisanship. There is no data in existence that suggests that Right to Work will do anything but put the squeeze on the Democratic Party (which if this forces the Democratic Party to take a hard look at what it is and how irrelevant it's in danger of becoming might be a good thing in the long run). It's not about freedom. It's not about attracting jobs. It's about sticking your thumb in the other person's eye. These guys can bitch all the like about past partisanship -- like the time the state senate passed anti-abortion legislation on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade -- all they care to, but this was the worst act of partisanship and the worst betrayal of campaign promises seen in a very long, long time.

I don't know much about the personal biography of Ari Adler, but in my experience a person with that name most likely comes from a Jewish background, being a Jewish guy myself. I bring this up because last year was (of course) the 100th anniversary of the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and those who are at all familiar with 20th Century American Jewish history know that the majority of the victims were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. It is well known that the fire had a big impact on the growth of the union movement, and it also contributed in part to heavy involvement of Jews in the 20th century union movement. Consequently, I find it absolutely disgraceful when people of my own ethnic/religious persuasion take part in the current reactionary agenda, such as the war on unions, given our history from just a few generations ago. I know I should be used to it already, given the role of people like Eric Cantor and Ari Fleischer in our recent politics, but still, it makes me want to vomit.